


never been south of 96th street

by thisstableground



Series: Main Timeline ITH Fics [3]
Category: In the Heights - Miranda/Hudes
Genre: Gen, Kidfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 15:24:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18552496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisstableground/pseuds/thisstableground
Summary: Eight years old is definitely grown-up enough to get the subway by yourself, no matter what their parents say, and Benny and Usnavi are totally not gonna get lost or anything.





	never been south of 96th street

**Author's Note:**

> [Just something I feel like they definitely would have done. Taking place around mid-October 2000 so if the details about the subway seem off to any New Yorkers reading it it’s entirely because of the date and for sure nothing to do with me the author not knowing anything at all about the New York City public transit system.]
> 
> [there's some references to Rise to Me here, which took place around seven weeks before this, mostly to do with how Benny and Usnavi met and how Usnavi broke his wrist. You probably don't have to have read it to understand 99% of this fic though.]

Usnavi loves the subway. He loves the way you have to rock on your feet with its movement so that it don’t shake you off balance. He loves when it’s empty enough he can use it as a jungle gym, climbing on seats to try and jump for the poles that are at head-height for grown-ups and spinning round the ones that stand vertical like Gene Kelly in Singin’ In The Rain. He loves the buskers who play on the platforms or even come onto the cars sometimes, even if Pai always tuts at him when he gives them his allowance money when they come round asking.

“That’s what I wanna do when I grow up,” he says, trying to jump up to sit on the counter and failing. Still not tall enough. One day!

“You hear that?” Pai says to Mamá, lifting Usnavi up to where he was trying to sit. “We’ve raised ourselves a street performer.”

“Train performer,” Usnavi corrects him. “On trains. Better’n bein’ stuck in a borin’ old grocery store all day.”

“That’s gratitude for you,” Mamá says. “I’m sorry that us being able to feed you and buy you things is so boring.”

Usnavi picks up a paper cup and balances it inverted on his head. “If you just let me go play out _side_ …”

“I told you, not till Benny gets here. Then you can do whatever you want together.”

“Ain’t see why I can’t just go play out on my own till Benny comes.”

“You’re too little, little one,” Pai says.

“Well, whose fault is that?” Usnavi grumbles, slithering tragically down to the floor behind the counter, the paper cup falling with him. He stays lying there in melodramatic protest for what must be at least a billion hours, his parents stepping over him like they don’t even see him.

Finally, the bell at the front rings and he hears Benny on the other side of the counter say, “Hey, Mr and Mrs De la Vega.”

“Bennybennybenny!” Usnavi hoots excitedly, springing to his feet. “You’re here! Let’s go!”

“Hello, Benny,” Mamá says warmly. “Haven’t we told you to call us by our first names?”

Benny makes a funny _no way_ face and everyone laughs, except Usnavi who is too ready to finally get out of the store where he’s been holed up all day waiting for his still new-ish best friend to show. He’s stopped in his tracks by Mamá, who catches his shoulder as he tries to make a dash for it. She makes an _ah-ah-ah_ noise, holding a finger up.

“Don’t forget your jacket,” she says, finding it where it’s stowed on one of the little shelves below the counter and handing it to him. “Try not to lose this one, por favor, we can’t afford to keep buying replacements.”

“Why do I need a jacket for anyway? I ain’t cold.” He takes it anyway, but ties it round his waist to show he don’t really need it.  
  
“Listen to your mother,” Pai admonishes. He opens the register and takes out five whole dollars that he hands to Usnavi. “ _Only_ in case of emergency. Bring it back if you don’t spend it.”

“Sí, Pai.”

“Be careful of your wrist.” Mamá indicates at his right arm where he’s just recently downgraded from full plaster cast to a brace, which he’s still gotta wear for another six weeks.

“ _Sí_ , Mamá.” Usnavi bounces up on tippy-toes to kiss Mamá on the cheek, then Pai, and then _finally_ races round to Benny's side. “C’mon!”

“Bye, Mr and Mrs De la Vega!” Benny says, waving as Usnavi drags him towards the door.

“And be back before dinner!” Pai yells after them, but they’re going too fast to answer.

They run as fast as they can for a few blocks just for the hell of it then they walk a little slower the rest of the way to the park. Benny tells Usnavi about the dentist appointment he just came back from - “did you get a sticker?” Usnavi wants to know. Benny scoffs and says he’s too old for stickers, and Usnavi points out that don’t make sense ‘cause Usnavi’s only a couple months younger than him and definitely ain’t too old for stickers, which seems toflummox Benny. Usnavi tells Benny all about his morning too, how he fed the cats who hang around outside the store and one of them patted him with its little paw like it was saying thanks and about how Piragüero told them he’s finishing up his daily rounds now that it’s getting further into fall and people don’t want piragua so much and he wished he remembered to ask what it is that Piragüero does during the winter months because he’s always wondered, and about how he’s decided that he’s gonna be a subway busker when he’s grown up.

“There was one guy I saw busking in the subway one time played the keyboard with his feet,” Benny tells him.

“Wow!” Usnavi marvels. It’s funny, ’cause on the one hand its like him and Benny have been best buds forever, but on the other hand really they only knew each other since September and its only middle of October now so theres still so many things he’s still figuring out about his life before living in the Heights. Usnavi’s never been to Harlem but it must be pretty amazing if Benny and a guy who can play keyboard with his feet are from there. “Did you get the train a lot when you lived back there? My folks is always busy so we don’t get to go places outside the Heights much.”

“Yeah, all the time,” Benny says. “Pretty much every day, really.”

“ _Wow._ By _yourself_?”

“Well…no.” 

“Oh.”

“But I could if I wanted to!” Benny adds hurriedly. “I know how all it works, I _coulda_ done it by myself, it’s just I never had the time, and then we moved here so I been real busy, you know.”

Usnavi don’t doubt him for a second. Benny’s so grown-up, the most grown-up kid Usnavi knows. Of course something like getting the subway wouldn’t be a problem for him. “Meantime I ain’t even allowed to play out by myself,” he laments. “But one day I’m gonna go see where you’re from, and I’ll go downtown all by myself, and maybe even to _Jersey._ That’s a whole nother state.”

He sighs, full of dreams of impossibly distant places like downtown and Jersey, which somehow seem even more unreachable than the Dominican Republic where they go every time they can afford a vacation. Everything’s much farther away if you gotta make your own way there.

They’ve got to the park now, but instead of going right for the entrance Benny taps his knuckles against one of the railings, dull _ding-ding-ding_ noise, and says, “we could go somewhere right now. We can go to my old hood and I can show you where all I used to hang out. I ain’t been back since we moved here. But it can get pretty rough, okay, so you gotta follow my lead and be cool.”

“I can be cool!” Usnavi says excitedly, before remembering why it is he’s never done this before. “Oh, wait, but I ain’t supposed to ride the subway by myself.”

Benny nods slowly, thoughtfully. “I mean…but technically you wouldn’t be, ‘cause on account of I’m gonna be with you, so you _technically_ ain’t by yourself, are you?”

Usnavi hesitates for a moment, because something tells him that _technically_ isn’t gonna fly with his parents. But…he _would_ be with Benny who knows his way round, and “my mamá said I couldn’t” definitely isn’t being cool, which he just now said he can be, and he really really wants to go. Besides, it ain’t like they have to ever find out, right?

“So long as I’m back by dinner,” he says.

***

So Benny mighta overhyped his subway knowledge just the tiniest bit, but how hard can it really be anyway? He knows what train they gotta get and then there’s either a bus or a walk and he ain’t so sure on specifics for either of those but once he gets off the train and gets on the streets he’ll for sure be able to remember. It’s only ‘cause he ain’t been back since the start of summer that he’s a bit rusty.

The man at the token booth at 168 gives them a funny look when they hand over Usnavi’s five dollars. but Benny stands up as tall as possible and it seems to work because he don’t tell them they’re too young to ride alone, just drops the tokens in Benny’s hand. It feels like they tricked him, somehow, him and Usnavi both desperately trying to hold in laughter till they’re out of sight like they just got away with the prank of the century. 

The C train ispretty empty at first: they race-jump across all the seats and then Benny tries to put Usnavi on his shoulders to reach the hanging straps like monkeybars but the train’s too wobbly, then a whole influx of people get on so the two of them just cling to the pole and talk the rest of the ride away. Tall for his age or not, Benny still ain’t big enough to see past everyone and out the window when the car’s full, but when the majority of the crowd all clear out at the same stop and the station sign comes into view his heart sinks. 96th street? That can’t be right. That’d mean they already went past 116th, and no way that coulda happened. Probably it must be the next one. 

He tries to keep conversation going with Usnavi until they pull into the next station. Oh, they definitely missed their stop.

“Benny?” Usnavi’s frowning out the window too now. “How come we’re at 86th? Ain’t that further down? Did we miss our stop?”

“No,” Benny says. “ _Next_ stop’s ours.”

“But you said 116th.”

“Yeah, but then I remembered how this is a short cut.“

“But how’s it a short cut if we’re further away?”

“Just trust me, it’s faster.”

“Okay!” Usnavi says. It’s very easy to get Usnavi to go along with whatever you tell him, is what Benny’s known since day one of meeting him a couple months back. Which, okay, it kinda bit them in the butt that time but this ain’t the same thing, he ain’t doing it to be mean, it’s just a little tiny lie. They’re only a couple stops further down the line. Benny knows what he’s doing.

***

The traffic, pedestrian and vehicle, is no worse or louder outside 81st than a hundred streets up at 181st, which is the closest stop to where Usnavi lives. Actually, it’s way less. The people are a whole lot less noisy when you walk by them in the street, they don’t yell at you to come buy what they’re selling or to get out of their way or just loud, loud conversation yelled right across the road. But even with the relative quiet it’s intimidating in its difference: there isn’t the comfort of slightly shabby signs in Spanish, the deli and the dentist and the stalls out in the street. There’s just big, tall clean buildings and big, tall clean trees set at even intervals as they follow the direction Benny had decisively pointed them in.

“This ain’t where you’re from, right?” Usnavi checks, because he’s never been to Harlem, but he’s heard about it and this don’t seem right.

Benny snorts. “ _No._ We gotta walk a ways first.”

They already have been walking a ways, for a pretty long time. They continue to do so, with no sign of Harlem in the architecture around them. Usnavi stares around, increasingly puzzled.

“Where are the fire escapes?” he asks. “This place seems fancy, you’d think they’d have even more fire escapes than we do, since rich people got way more stuff that they don’t wanna get burnt up in a fire.”

“But they can afford to just buy all new stuff,” Benny points out, which is true, but Usnavi still feels pretty unsettled till they finally pass a few buildings with those familiar black staircases adorning their heights.

They carry on.

“Why do they put those little fences round the trees? Ain’t like you can’t just step over them if you want to.”

“It’s ‘cause of …” Benny falters. “It’s ‘cause of people buyin’ ‘em. Like, they’re rich here but they ain’t private garden rich so people just buy a tree instead, and the fence is just to show how it belongs to someone and you ain’t allowed to touch it.”

“Oh! I see,” Usnavi says. “How come you know so much stuff?”

“I been around,” Benny says in a voice that holds all the gravity and weariness of someone who’s lived entire lifetimes in his eight short years. Then, contemplatively, he stretches his leg over the tiny fence and pokes the tree with the tip of his sneaker. “Kicked your tree,” he informs the building next to them. “What you gonna do about it?”

Usnavi, not wanting to be left out, also puts one foot inside the perimeter of the fence. Benny high-fives him. They carry on.

***

Okay, Benny will admit that winging it all the way to Harlem isn’t going quite as flawless as he’d hoped. He’s pretty sure they’ve passed the same hotel four times now, and ain’t even seen one single road sign to set them on the right track. At least Usnavi don’t seem to have noticed, somehow, but even if he’s not figured out that Benny might not be quite so clued up on Manhattan geography as he said he was, he’s definitely flagging.

“How much further is it?” he asks. 

Benny’s about to come up with an answer that’ll hopefully satisfy him without actually having to lie about it, but then they walk past an entryway gap in the wall alongside them and he just exclaims “Central Park!”, excited to have found something he’s more familiar with, even if only vaguely. They’re in the Upper West Side, this is Central Park, Harlem’s on the east side, so that means they just gotta cross to the other side of the park and then he’ll know where to go.

Usnavi’s just as excited, for different reasons. “Bennyyyy they have a zoo here! Pai took me one time, we should go, we could go right now.”

“But we ain’t got enough money for zoo tickets,” Benny says, and Usnavi wilts, then immediately bounces back.

“Thy got playgrounds here too,” he says hopefully. “That don’t cost none. We could stop and play? Just for a little bit? Can we?”

Benny grins at him. “Ain’t nobody here to stop us, is there?”

There’s a couple playgrounds in Central Park, he knows, but the one they find first is beyond compare. It ain’t a playground, it’s a freakin’ kingdom, a million things to climb and jump on and slide down. Usnavi sometimes falls behind a bit, probably because it’s harder to scramble up all the fake rock features and walls with his wrist still in a brace, but he determinedly unties the jacket from round his waist and rolls up his trailing pant-legs to give him more range of movement and mostly keeps up with Benny. 

Once they’ve explored every inch of the place and fought terrible pirate hoardes and Benny’s been sentenced to walk the plank off the edge of the slide, he lies in his final watery grave in the soft sand at the bottom. Usnavi slides down too and comes to lie next to him.

“Aw, buddy, they got you too?” Benny says.

“I jumped overboard before they could get to me,” Usnavi says. “I thought you might get bored bein’ dead all by yourself.” He makes a sand-angel and says, “I’m glad we come here. We’re real good at adventures.”

“Uh-huh,” Benny agrees. “See? We don’t need no parents to take us nowhere, we done this all by ourselves. And it was _easy.”_

“Right!” Usnavi says, holding his fist out. Benny bumps it. “Wait, wasn’t we s’posed to be goin’ to Harlem? How long have we been here?”

“Oh, shoot.” Benny checks the watch he got off his cousin for Christmas, the G-Shock that’s so cool and real hard to read, squinting past all the weird little mini-faces to the little glow-in-the-dark hands, little one halfway past the four and big one at the eight means... “Oh, man, it’s four-fourty already?!”

“I gotta be back by six,” Usnavi says. “That’s—“ he counts on his fingers, stares blankly at his hands, and counts again before settling on, “that’s prob’ly not enough time.”

“Probly not, if we gotta get the train all the way back.”

Usnavi looks kinda disappointed, and Benny is a little too, but he thinks maybe he had more fun here than he woulda done in Harlem anyway. He misses it and his old friends sometimes, but it wasn’t so great back there. He didn’t have nobody who woulda jumped off a pretend boat for him, for starters.

They’re almost out of the park on their way back to the station when Usnavi stops dead and yells, “¡puta madre, mi chaqueta! I left it at the playground!” then hurtles off back into the park to look for it. Benny follows, and they search and search across the whole playground but Usnavi’s jacket is nowhere to be seen. 

Usnavi kicks the sand and blows his bangs out of his eyes. “Mierda. That’s the second one I lost this year. Mamá’s gonna be real mad at me.”

“Sucks," Benny says. "Your money wasn’t in your jacket, was it?”

“Nah, it’s here,” Usnavi says, pulling two crumpled dollar bills out of the pocket of his too-big jeans. ‘Here, you should prob’ly hold it, I don’t wanna lose it.”

Benny takes it to put in his own pocket and immediately a horrible understanding washes over him. He looks at the bills again hoping he’ll come to a different conclusion but it’s two dollars, its real hard to miscalculate. “Wait, is this all the money you got with you?"

“Yeah, why?”

“Subway token’s one-fifty each.” At Usnavi’s uncomprehending look Benny explains, “it cost three dollars to get both of us a token and now we only got two dollars left?”

Usnavi’s mouth works silently as if he’s checking Benny’s math and then, very quietly but very emphatically, he says, “aaaaw _fuck_.”

***

They empty out everything in their pockets hoping to find another dollar somehow, but no luck. Benny’s got a quarter and gum and a Hot Wheels car and a key to his place. Usnavi’s got a key to _his_ place and a semi-melted candy bar and a slightly chewed-on eraser and some Pokémon cards and a balled-up tissue and a lid from a coke bottle and one of the business cards from Kevin’s dispatch that Nina had drew a funny face on for him and a cherry flavor chapstick, which he applies now. He offers it to Benny who hold both his hands up like Usnavi’s pointing a gun at him and says “I ain’t wear no lipstick, man.”

“It’s chapstick.” He licks the taste off his lips, even though Pai says that defeats the point of chapstick but he can’t help himself.

“Well I ain’t wear none of that neither. Boys don’t wear that.”

“Why?”

“I…well…I don’t know.”

“I wear it and I’m a boy.” Benny doesn't have a comeback for that. Usnavi applies some more and licks his lips again. “Anyhow, it tastes like cherry and I’m _so_ hungry. We walked forever _.”_

“Okay,” Benny says decisively. “We passed a dollar pizza place like just before the park, we got two dollars, I say we get somethin’ to eat and come up with a plan to get home.”

“Can’t we just call my dad to come get us?”

“Are you kiddin’? We ain’t callin’ nobody, we can do this ourselves. Oh! Okay, but how about this, we get to Harlem I got a cousin can drive us both back in his car, and he definitely won’t snitch on us.”

“Pero do we got time?”

“It ain’t so far now, we just gotta cross through Central Park and go up a bit,” Benny says. “We might be a tiiiny bit late. But we can just tell ‘em we was playing and lost track, they’ll believe us. It ain’t _technically_ a lie.”

Usnavi’s torn. They’ve been out for long enough that the idea of just calling Pai and getting him to come find them and take them home sounds so much easier. But they will be furious, and Benny will be in trouble too, and if they gotta explain why they’re in the upper west side to begin with and their parents realise they couldn’t even make it to where they wanted to be going then they’ll say that proves they aint old enough to be out by themselves when they totally are.

“Pizza first, though,” he says.

“Yeah, definitely pizza first.”

***

“Hay un sorpresa,” Mateo says, turning the burner down low under the pot of rice. “Dinner is ready and no Usnavi.”

“You shouldn’t have given him that five dollars. I bet they spent it all on candy and they’re on a sugar rampage round the barrio,” Rosa says. She knows her son too well: he never means to misbehave, he just forgets not to sometimes.

“Little terrors,” Mateo says fondly.

“Are we going to reopen for a late shift tonight?”

Mateo pulls her into his side, kissing her forehead. “Hm. No, no lo creo. We did pretty well this week, and it’s been too long since we had a quiet night in together.”

“About eight years, I think,” she says. Mateo laughs. Rosa traces the smile lines at the corner of his mouth with her finger then leans her head on his shoulder. Life is so busy and it’s a rare occasion since opening the store, since having a child, that they get these little moments to just _be_ together. “We should enjoy the peace while it lasts.”

They give it another five minutes to see if Usnavi shows, but after their day at work, they’re too hungry and tired to wait any longer to eat. Rosa isn’t too worried as they sit down to dinner with Usnavi’s still keeping warm on the stove, this is pretty standard for him. He never means to be late, he just forgets not to be. They’ve tried to get him a watch, but the one week he managed to stick out wearing it he’d only forget to check it anyway so it’s pointless, and ten or fifteen minutes past curfew never seems worth fighting over when she knows he tries his best.

Besides, at least he’s not out on his own. That’s been something of a relief, the past few weeks. She loves her son more than anything, considers him the most delightful gift God ever put upon the earth, but even Rosa has to admit that he’s…well, there’s no nice way to say it, he’s naive, even for his young age. It’s how he ended up tangled up with those two awful boys he used to tag along with, it’s something her and Mateo are constantly tearing their hair out about. Benny might be a little bit of a mischief, but he’s been very kind to Usnavi in the short time they’ve been friends, and he seems to have his wits about him when it comes to being out in the world. It’s a lot easier to relax when she knows someone’s keeping an eye out for him.

***

Benny’s lost Usnavi.

Both of them are too tired to talk much, after all the walking and the playing and the pizza, just focused now on getting home in enough time that it won’t be suspicious, so it took him a minute to notice that the skinny little shadow bobbing at his side wasn’t there.

He stops in the street, turning in a full circle once, then again just in case he missed anything. There’s a rising panic feeling in his stomach, which is definitely only ‘cause Usnavi’s probably lost, and not at all because Benny’s just found himself totally alone with no money in the middle of the Upper East Side, a place he ain’t even slightly familiar with. If they had thought the Upper West Side was fancy it’s nothing compared to here, and Benny’s pretty sure his knee-length tank top and scuffed Jordans and big cloud of hair are gonna draw some looks

Okay. Don’t freak out. Usnavi was right next to him as they were coming out the east side of Central Park, and they only been walking n a straight line since then, so just walk back along that way and—there he is. Not far from the entrance of the park and - Benny breaks into a run when he sees it - talking to a man in a suit, who’s bending down a little ways to listen to him. 

He gets there so fast he doesn’t stop in time and almost knocks Usnavi over, snarling “yo, get away from my friend, you creep,” at the man, who mostly looks confused but at least takes a few steps backwards. 

“Are you lost too?” he asks Benny. “Where are you trying to get to?”

Benny scowls. “We ain’t goin’ nowhere with you.”

“Do you need directions? Or I could find a policeman to take you home?”

“What? Why? We ain’t done nothin’ wrong. We just walkin’, aint no law against kids just walkin’, is there?”

The man looks utterly bewildered. “No, but…it’s getting dark, and your friend looks very young to be out on his own, I was just—“

“Hey!” Usnavi objects. “Me and him are the same age.”

“Ah. And that age is…?” 

Benny says “twelve” at the same time Usnavi says “eight”. Dammit. The man looks between them, and since Usnavi can barely pass for seven, never mind twelve, he decisively says “I’ll get a policeman.”

Benny seizes Usnavi by his uninjured wrist and books it. He don’t pay attention to where they’re going, or to Usnavi’s protesting noises, or to the man calling after them, until they’re well out of sight and can lean against the side of a building to catch their breath.

“What the hell are you doin’?” Usnavi demands, panting.

“What the hell are _you_ doin’?!” Benny returns. “Go round talkin’ to some dude you ain’t never met, you’re lucky I’m here to save your ass.”

“He was nice!” Usnavi says defensively.

“Oh, yeah, real nice guy, you want we should go back there so he can get the cops on us?”

Usnavi shakes his head fiercely. “Hell no, I don’t want nothin’ to do with no cops. They ain’t nothin’ but trouble. You know Leo who sells CDs on the stall got arrested last week? Just for sellin’ music?”

“Why’s white people always think police is gonna fix everythin’ anyway?” Benny asks rhetorically.

Usnavi shrugs. “My mamá says when I get lost I should look for a woman with little kids and ask her.”

“We aint talkin’ to no more strangers,” Benny says firmly. “We can do this on our own, we don’t need no help. I know what I’m doin’, okay?”

***

Benny’s late home again. Ain’t the first time it’s happened and won’t be the last, Shanae is sure, and there’s always the part of her going grey over what her son might be doing, but it ain’t the way it used to be back when they lived in Harlem: old habits die hard, but she’s starting to worry less that every time might be the one where he doesn’t come home at all, about what he might get dragged intowhen he insists on going out with kids too much older, too much tougher, too much more broke down by the world than any eight year old should be around. It's why she ended up moving to the Heights in the first place. Benny had been furious at first, hadn't understood that it wasn't that she thought he was bad, it's that she knew he wasn't, that he deserved a chance to live somewhere he could be the sweet, kind boy she knows he's always been under all the bravado. He deserves a chance to just be a kid.

And after a bit of a rocky start over the summer, an even rockier start to the school year, things are looking up: he’s out with Usnavi, his funny new little friend who definitely ain’t tough nor broken down, but who is just as bad at keeping time as Benny is. So Shanae rolls her eyes and gets on with cleaning the apartment, and it’s not until it’s almost seven that she starts to wonder where he might be at. An hour late is very late, even for Benny.

If the past few months are anything to judge by, he’s at Usnavi’s place, and the De la Vegas are as trustworthy as about anyone. But it don’t hurt to check, so she calls up Rosa expecting to hear that Benny decided to drop by theirs for dinner and instead gets a long, pregnant pause before Rosa says, “well, I was about to call and ask you if Usnavi was at your place, but I guess that answers that.”

Shanae clicks air through her teeth with her tongue, _tss-tss_. “They’re probably still out playing. You know what those boys are like.”

“Ye-ees,” Rosa says, long and drawn out.

She looks out the window, at the skies that have gone from twilight-dim to almost sunset. “…I think I better come over.”

“Sí, I think that’s a good idea.”

***

They got a little bit turned around after running away from the man outside Central Park, weren’t sure where they were til Benny had yelled “Lexington! I know this one, it goes right up through Harlem!”, so Usnavi had been hopeful that meant they’ll get there and find Benny’s cousin soon. So far, so bitterly disappointing: the buildings are all still distinctly Upper East Side. No mistaking it.

They’ve been trying their best to keep spirits up. They sang for a little bit, then played I-Spy, but it’s no good: its a neverending trudge forwards up Lexington Avenue, and he knows time goes slow for things you don’t wanna do but they got Benny’s watch and it don’t just feel like an hour, it’s literally _been_ a whole hour. It’s dark, they already ate Usnavi’s melty candy bar and all of Benny’s gum, his broken wrist is achey and he ain’t had nothing to drink since one of the water fountains in Central Park. His feet don’t even wanna move no more, it’s like trying to walk through water but worse, trailing miserably behind while Benny keeps striding ahead.

Benny turns around and says, “c’mon, Usnavi, we’re almost there” for the millionth time.

Usnavi stops walking, last straw finally dropped in place and wails, “You been saying that all _day_! You been sayin’ we almost there all day and it’s dark and my feet hurt and we ain't ever gonna get nowhere! I’m tired! I ain’t understand why we cant just call my pai to find us so we can go _home!’_

He sits on the floor. Benny bounces agitatedly around him, trying to calm him down and doing badly at it: “please don’t cry please don’t cry I’ll get us home. Please just stop crying!”

“But I can’t!”

“It…I—okay, okay, look, come on, okay. Fine. We’ll go find a payphone and call your dad, okay, stop crying I got a quarter and we can call your dad.”

Usnavi hiccups, hopefully. “We can?”

“Yeah, yeah! But you gotta walk a bit more, okay?”

“Okay.” 

Benny holds out his hand to help Usnavi up. They don’t un-hold them until they find a payphone, which is a little bit embarrassing ‘cause Usnavi knows Benny’s too brave to need to hold hands so it’s obviously for his benefit but to be fair, he very much needs it right now.

“What’s your number?” Benny asks, picking up the receiver and putting his quarter in the coin slot.

“Um…”

“You ain’t know it?”

“It’s writ on the tag of my jacket in case I get lost,” Usnavi explains. “But now my jacket is lost, so.”

“Oh. Well, I know my number, we’ll have to call my mom.” Benny grimaces. “She ain’t gonna be happy.”

Usnavi don’t even care about getting in trouble any more. The prospect of being saved, even if it’s just to be yelled at, is such a relief that he gets one last burst of energy from reserves he didn’t know he had, bouncing on his toes while Benny waits for the call to connect. And waits. And waits.

The quarter drops back into the return tray at the bottom.

“It rang out,” Benny says. He looks down at the receiver in his hand, then at Usnavi.

“Is she at work tonight?” Usnavi suggests.

“No.”

“Maybe she’s just in the bathroom.”

“Yeah,” Benny says. “Yeah, that must be it, I’ll try again.”

He does. It rings out again, and the next time too. Benny takes the quarter out of the tray when it drops back down for the third time, and spins it between his fingers. “She didn’t answer,” he says, sounding quietly shocked.

Usnavi waits for him to come up with plan B. Instead, Benny keeps spinning the quarter between his fingers. His bottom lip starts to stick out, just a little. He sniffs, loudly.

“Ay, dios mio,” Usnavi whispers, wide-eyed, as for the first time he’s ever seen, Benny starts to cry.

***

Usnavi’s so much better at being comforting than he is, Benny realises while blubbering on the floor of a payphone booth with Usnavi crouched next to him, an arm round Benny’s shoulders and talking in the same soothing, high voice Benny’s heard him use to talk to nervous stray cats outside the bodega. 

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he coos, then says something in Spanish that Benny doesn’t understand.

“But it’s my fault!” Benny says, through his tears. “I shoulda just told you I didn’t really know where we was or asked that man earlier or I shouldnta even said we come out here in the first place, and—and—"

“Hey, everyone makes mistakes,” Usnavi says, still in that high, soft tone. It makes him sound like Benny's grandma, kinda, if she had the voice of an eight-year-old Dominican boy. “Aquí, wait a second—“

He takes his arm off Benny’s shoulder to root around in his pockets, emptying out all the junk he carries round onto the floor till he finds a tissue and hands it to Benny, saying “I only used it a little bit.”

Benny takes the tissue and dries his eyes and wipes his nose and feels a little bit better,albeit in a melancholy, resigned way, grim acceptance of their fate. Usnavi pats his shoulder, then sits down next to him again, knees drawn up and arms tucked between them and his chest. Even with the shelter of the payphone booth it’s a lot colder now the sun’s set and they aren’t walking, October nights in full swing and Usnavi’s got no jacket. Benny shrugs one arm out of his own jacket and says “here”, holding it open for Usnavi to get one arm in it, then he does it up around them both as far as the zipper will let him.

“I’m sorry I got us both lost,” Benny says, glumly. “I guess we ain’t ever gonna get back home, are we?”

“Guess not,” Usnavi says. “Man. I aint even gonna get to meet the baby when he’s born. I really wanted to be an older cousin someday. I hope they still tell him all about me.”

“My mom’s gonna have to live all by herself in the apartment,” Benny says. “I was gonna get rich and buy her a house when I was older.” 

They both sigh, and share a long wistful moment imagining the life that could’ve been if only they weren’t trapped so, so far away, way too far away to ever be found.

“Pues, I guess if this is where we live now we just gotta make the best of it," Usnavi says, with forced cheer. “C’mon, lets play some Pokémon cards! I ain’t really know how the game works but we can put ‘em in color order and make the noises.”

“D’you have any shinies?”

“I got the Mewtwo from when Abuela took me to see the movie.” Usnavi takes his little stack of cards off the floor then squirms his other arm up out of the neck of the jacket so he can use both hands to shuffle through them. “And I got a Gengar, and a Flareon, and—oop, not that—“ he flicks a smaller, bright blue-and-red piece of card with a familiar logo away to join the rest of his pocket-treasures piled on the ground.

“Wait wait wait, what was that?!” Benny says, forgetting they’re both in a jacket together and trying to lunge for the piece of card. it takes a confusing and slightly painful moment to untangle and then unzip themselves but when they do he picks it up, holds it like a precious diamond as Usnavi says “it’s a man with a funny mustache. Nina Rosario drew it for me.”

“It’s from the dispatch!” Benny says excitedly. “It’s got the number on it! We can get a cab to come find us!”

“¡Alabanza!” Usnavi yells. “Call it, call it!”

Benny fumbles to put his quarter back in the phone and dials the dispatch number, his fingers clenched in painful anticipation round the receiver, keeping a kind of terrified-hopeful eye contact with Usnavi, who bites nervously at the side of his thumb as it rings.

“Rosario’s Car and Limo, Kevin speaking.”

“Mr Rosario? It’s Benny Roberts. Um, I’m Usnavi’s friend?”

“Ah, yes,” Mr Rosario says. “I’ve heard about you.”

***

“Well, _someone_ must have seen them, Dani, two whole kids don’t just _disappear into nothing_!”

“Heyheyhey!” Dani says sharply, snapping her fingers in front of his face. “Mateo. You need to stay calm.”

“Calm?!” Mateo says, shrilly. “They were supposed to be home over three hours ago! What is there to be calm about?!”

“You will be calm because Usnavi needs you to be,” Dani says. “Now. Where have you looked already?”

“Everywhere. They haven’t been to Abuela’s, none of Shanae’s neighbors have seen them, we’ve checked the park and asked Kevin to put word out on the radio to all the drivers.” He shakes his head. “We’ve looked _everywhere_.”

Dani exhales, very slowly. “I hate to say it, but are you going to contact the police?”

“I think we’re out of other options. I’m not leaving two eight year olds to run around on their own all night. Oh, god, Dani…”

“Ay, madre,” Dani murmurs. She puts both her hands on his arms, reassuringly firm. “Listen to me. The boys will be fine. I’ll call around and see if anyone’s seen them, okay? I hear about everything that goes on in this neighborhood, we’ll get them back to you in no time.”

He nods gratefully. “I better get back and see if the ladies have had any luck.”

“Tell me as soon as you hear something, si?”

“Claro.” 

When he gets back to their own apartment, he knows before Rosa even shakes her head that there’s not been any news yet. She’s standing, arms folded tightly. Shanae is sitting on the couch and playing with the silver St Christopher hanging from the chain round her neck, rubbing the pendant between her thumb and finger. 

Mateo sits in the armchair and buries his face in his hands. Usnavi has been the biggest source of stress in Mateo’s previously laid-back life from the day Rosa woke him up in the middle of the night five weeks before her due date sobbing and clutching her stomach, blood on the sheets, and hasn't stopped since, through every hour in the NICU he sat with his finger poking through the little hole in the side of the incubator to touch his baby’s tiny, fragile hand and listening to the heart monitor beep, and every scraped knee and upset stomach and aching heart in the eight years since. All that practice, and he never feels prepared when something goes wrong. Every broken wrist since. That call from the hospital…there’s nothing a parent wants to hear less than “your son was just brought into the emergency room”. Except for maybe “we still don’t know where your son is”.

The phone rings, and all of them jump out of their skin. Mateo gets to it first, pressing it so hard into the side of his face it’ll probably leave a mark. “Hello?”

“I think I found something that belongs to you,” Kevin says, a little amused, a little sombre. “Or a couple of someones.”

“Los encontrò? They’re with you?” Mateo’s legs almost give out with relief. Rosa comes up to his side, clutching his sleeve, leaning in to try to listen.

“I’ve sent a cab out to them. Benny called me from a payphone. In the Upper East Side.”

“Que? ¿Qué diablos estaban haciendo the Upper East Side?!”

“Trying to get to Harlem, according to Benny.”

“Dios mio, why on Earth…you said they’re in a cab now?”

“Sí, Joel had just finished a job close by where they were, he’s bringing them to your place. Nothing broken, they’re just very tired, he says.”

“Gracias, Kevin, thank you, so much, you have no idea…”

“De nada. I’ll put the word out to stop looking.”

“They’re both okay?” Shanae asks when Mateo hangs up.

“Yeah. They’re both fine. Kevin’s got a cab bringing them here.” He looks at Rosa, who’s still clinging onto his arm. The looks she gives him back confirms she’s thinking the same thing.

Dios. He hates to bring this up when Shanae’s had as difficult a night as they have. But Mateo and Rosa more than did their time waiting and wondering if their boy will come home when he first came into the world. That call from Kevin could have been another call from the hospital. The call from the hospital could have been more than a broken bone. Usnavi’s the most stressful thing that’s ever happened to Mateo, and he has no intention of ever losing that.

“Shanae,” he says. “I think when the boys get home we might need to have a bit of a talk about them spending time together.”

“What do you mean?”

“Kevin says apparently they were trying to get to Harlem. I don’t want to point fingers, but…”

“But that’s a Benny idea through and through,” Shanae confirms, closing her eyes in resignation. “God. I was hopin' movin’ here would stop this kind of silly thing. I thought—since he’s been hangin’ out with your boy he’s been so much more—so much more _settled_ in himself. Why he’d wanna go all the way back there, or bring Usnavi with him, I just don’t understand it.”

“If they’d made it there, at this time of night, by themselves—”

“I know.” She shakes her head, tears in her eyes. “He ain’t a bad kid,” she says. “He really ain’t. He don’t mean for things like this to happen.”

“We know he isn’t,” Rosa says, taking her hand, “but we have to put Usnavi’s safety first. They both need to learn to be less impulsive and I don’t think they can do that when they're together.”

“I’m real sorry all this happened. And so soon after that broken wrist…”

Mateo thinks about having to break the news to Usnavi and Benny when they get home, and says “I’m sorry too.”

***

Usnavi musta slept in the cab, because he blinks and suddenly they’re back home, outside his bodega. The lights over the awning flicker, his own last name shouted back to him from the sign. He’s never been so happy to see anything in his life.

Joel walks them all the way from the cab to the top of the stairs, makes sure they’re right at the door before he heads off. “Don’t want you runnin’ off again,” he says with a smile. Neither Benny nor Usnavi laugh. 

Usnavi’s trying to get his hands to work well enough to put his key in the lock when there’s the sound of loud footsteps behind the door. It swings open before he has a chance to do it himself, and then he’s immediately swept off his exhausted feet into a familiar embrace. “Usnavi!”

“Pai!” 

“Usnavi, mi Usnavi, mi pequeño,” Pai says, then keeps saying it, and Mamá’s there too kissing all over his face, like they were just as scared as he was that he’d be lost forever. He stays in this welcome moment of pure relief, before anyone gets mad or asks questions, but finally he looks down from his pai's arms at Benny and his mom, something telling him it’s all about to go down.

Shanae moves a few curls off the front of Benny’s face, looking at him closely to check he’s all there, and then puts her hands on his shoulders. “You better explain yourself right the hell now, Benny Roberts.”

Benny shrugs, looking at the floor.

“Nuh-uh, that is not an explanation, not after we’ve been here losin' our minds all night wonderin' where you were at! You know you ain’t supposed to get the train by yourself! And gettin' yourselves lost afterwards, what were you _thinkin'?_ ”

“I thought—!” he bursts out loudly, then mutters, “I thought I could do it, okay?”

“Well, you thought wrong, didn’t you? And draggin' Usnavi into your messes, too, what if something had happened to him, what if you’d got separated? Did you even think about that?”

“I don’t _know!”_ Benny shouts, stomping his foot, and then bursts into tears again. His mom immediately hugs him close to her.

“Why ain't you ever realize how _scared_  I get, Benny?” she says. “You’re all I got.”

“I wouldn’t blame it all on Benny,” Pai says, and he sets Usnavi down on the ground. Usnavi lets go of him reluctantly, bringing the neckline of his t-shirt to his mouth to chew on. Pai don’t get mad often, but he looks pretty mad now. “How many times have we told you not to go off somewhere without telling us? How many times do we have to tell you to come home before dark?”

“Lo siento,” Usnavi mutters. “It was only this one time.”

“It isn’t one time! Remember when I came to pick you up from school and you’d already left? Or when you left to go see Nina when we were both in the backroom and we didn’t know where you’d gone? I don’t know how else to make you see that you can’t just run off whenever you feel like it! Why didn’t you call us earlier? That’s why we wrote the number in your jacket.”

“I lost my jacket, he says. The explanation does not appease his parents in any way.

“And that!” Mama says, throwing her hands in the air. “Another new jacket that we’ll have to buy. We’ll have to pay Joel back for driving you all the way here, he missed out on other customers to help you. All the people we had to disturb to help look for you, your Abuela was so upset, did you think about any of this before you decided to run off?”

“I _said_ I’m sorry, Mamá,” he says, thickly, both very aware that he’s in the wrong here and feeling unjustly, unfairly attacked. “It won’t happen again.”

“You’re right, it won’t,” Shanae says. “Benny, I don’t know what else to do to get through to you, but I can’t have you bringin' other kids into it. This is it.”

“What?” Benny and Usnavi say. They exchange a glance, neither of them understanding the words but definitely hearing the finality of the tone.

“We think it’s for the best,” Rosa says slowly, “if maybe you boys don’t see each other quite so much.”

“You mean…stop being friends?” Benny says, looking devastated.

“No, no, you can still see each other at school,” Pai says. “But outside of school, and the going off alone, it’s just too—"

“No!” Usnavi says, latching on to Benny’s arm. “You can’t do this, you can’t! I ain’t never had a best friend before and I ain’t gonna go out and find another when i got a perfectly good one already, and you ain’t gonna stop us hangin’ out, and—and if you try to we’re gonna go live in the payphone again. So there!”

“You’re going to…what?”

_“Please_ , Mr De la Vega,” Benny pleads. “I ain’t want another best friend except Usnavi neither. It was just a mistake, I didn’t mean to get us lost or into trouble, I really didn’t, it won’t never happen again but you can’t, please.”

Pai hesitates, and looks at Shanae, who looks at Mamá, who looks back.

Usnavi says, “‘member how I told you when Stevie wrote snitch on my cast and Benny made him leave me alone and they aint said nothin’ to me since? Probly if he wasn’t my friend I woulda broken _all_ my wrists by now. And my legs.”

“Usnavi, no exageres,” Mamá says, but he could see she instantly softened at the mention of how Benny’s been keeping Usnavi well-shielded from bullies: she was real upset when she found that Stevie and Lucas hadn’t just been a one-time incident,. “I—well. He does look out for you, doesn’t he?

"He does! So much!”

“…Shanae?”

Shanae makes a little clicky hissy noise with her teeth and says to Benny, “Iget a lot less calls home from school since we came here…”

“You do!" Benny confirms emphatically.

Their moms both make some faces and gestures at each other, a silent discussion. Usnavi grabs Benny’s hand and they hold on tightly, waiting, another moment where the meaning underneath all this grown-up looking and thinking and face-moving is incomprehensible. It’s more promising than outright refusal, at least.

“I can’t do another evening like this,” Shanae says eventually, exhaustedly. She fixes Benny with a stare, then Usnavi. “Not _one_ more, you hear?”

“We hear,” they chorus.

“Alright then. Yes. Fine.”

“So we can still be best friends?” Usnavi says.

“Yes, you can still be best friends.” Her voice is reluctant but there’s a little bit of a smile on her face.

Benny shakes his hand around so it wobbles Usnavi’s that he’s holding onto, both of them too tired to celebrate any more than that, but definitely on the inside Usnavi is singing a victory song.

“But for the love of god no more subway rides,” Pai adds. “Both of you. Not until you’re at least thirty.”

“Ni hablar,” Usnavi agrees, holding his arms out so Pai will pick him back up. “I ain’t ever gonna leave the barrio again. It’s way too scary out there.”

**Author's Note:**

> [this fic marks me officially having written more than 500,000 words of fanfiction. that is a whole lot of words. please leave a comment if you liked it!]


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